Eric White: New Works From Virtual Artist Revealed

“Sometimes we make paintings to tell a story about what we’ve seen… tell stories for no particular reason… blessedly immune to observation, criticism, or praise.”
– Viggo Mortensen on Eric White

September 18 – October 18, 2015

Artist Reception: Thursday, September 17 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – August 26, 2015 – Serge Sorokko Gallery is pleased to announce the U.S. premiere of Eric White: New Works, an exhibition featuring original paintings and works on paper. The show marks the artist’s first exhibition in San Francisco. A private reception for the artist will be held on September 17, 2015. Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Arquette will attend, and other notable personalities and collectors are expected as well. The exhibition will run from September 18 through October 18, 2015 at the Serge Sorokko Gallery.

Eric White is an American visual artist based in New York. He received a BFA degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1990 and served as an adjunct professor at The School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 2010, The New York Foundation for the Arts awarded White a Painting Fellowship.

White’s extensive body of work includes paintings, drawings and sculpture. His paintings are derived from disrupted, cinematic moments where his subjects vacillate between character immersion and audience interaction: the landscape of the film set is just out of reach to the viewer. His work is centered around carefully executed figurative paintings, revealing influences of traditional Surrealism, neo-Realism and Conceptualism. “The paintings and drawings,” writes art critic Leah Ollman of the Los Angeles Times, “strike a resonant chord – nostalgic and at the same time also vaguely futuristic, even dystopian. White, based in New York, has a devilish sense of humor.”

White’s paintings have been shown in prominent contemporary art galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Copenhagen, and Milan, amongst others. His work has been exhibited at the Laguna Art Museum, Museo de la Ciudad de México, Museo d’arte Contemporanea Roma, The American Visionary Museum in Baltimore, and the Long Beach Museum of Art, to name a few. A collection of his work, “It Feeds Itself,” was published in 2003, followed by a book based on his solo exhibition “Who Are Parents?” in 2005. White’s first important monograph – an extensive survey of his work – is scheduled to be released by Rizzoli in October 2015.

Serge Sorokko founded the Serge Sorokko Gallery in 1984, building a solid reputation on its collection of post-war and contemporary works by internationally recognized artists. Located in the heart of Union Square in downtown San Francisco, the gallery has introduced collectors to established European and American artists such as Damien Hirst, Ross Bleckner, Sol LeWitt, Donald Sultan, Sean Scully, Antoni Tapies, and Jannis Kounellis.

The Serge Sorokko Gallery has also played a pivotal role in organizing many of the first cultural exchanges between the United States and post-Soviet Russia, including the museum exhibition curated by art critic Donald Kuspit, Painting Beyond the Death of Painting (1989), of celebrated New York artists in Moscow.